


Once Upon A Hammer Time

by DesertScribe



Category: The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.
Genre: Backstory, Blacksmithing, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-02
Updated: 2019-08-02
Packaged: 2020-07-29 07:48:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20078680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertScribe/pseuds/DesertScribe
Summary: A brief peek at the origins of the Schwenke sisters.





	Once Upon A Hammer Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Missy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/gifts).

It was (and still is) a long way from Bavaria to the great western state of California, and the Schwenke sisters rarely told anyone how they had come to make such a journey. They made no attempt to hide their origins, but they also did not feel those origins were notable enough for them to bother mentioning them unprompted. If asked, they would have been happy to tell the story, because who does not enjoy sharing memories of a happy youth? Whether the listener's grasp of the German language would be up to the task of following the tale is another matter entirely and not of our concern at the moment.

A condensed version of their story went a little something like this:

Katrina and Ilsa's father had been a practical man. He had also been a loving man to those who could see past his gruff exterior, but mostly he had been practical. This love and practicality meant that when none of his sons had shown any interest in following in his footsteps as a blacksmith despite his best efforts to start them at it early, he discussed the matter with his wife, Helga, and then his discussed the matter with all of his children, and then he sent his sons off to pursue careers which better held their interests as apprentices to the local butcher, and to the local baker, and to the master cuckoo clock maker who lived three towns to the east. Then he immediately turned his attention to teaching his trade to his two youngest daughters.

Everyone else in town shrugged ruefully and said to each other, "That Hans Schwenke is a practical man. What else can a practical man do but settle for passing on his knowledge and skills to his daughters when his sons prove to be unteachable and no one else has any spare sons to apprentice to him?" They pitied the practical man for having to make the best of a bad situation, and they credited his hard work and perseverance with the fact that Katrina took to blacksmithing like a fish to the water while Ilsa took to it like a bird to the air. Those townsfolk all forgot, or possibly never knew, that Hans Schwenke was also a loving man, so they never suspected that he had allowed all of his children to follow their hearts when deciding their futures, not just his sons.

And thus Katrina and Ilsa grew up learning how to tell the temperature of hot iron by the color that it glowed and how to balance strength and dexterity to shape that iron into whatever object was needed, all while enjoying clothing and protective leather aprons and gloves sewed by their elder sister, and bread from their eldest brother the baker, and meat from their middle brother the butcher, and fascinating glimpses into the possibilities of complex mechanical constructions by their youngest brother the clockmaker. And when all their work was finished for the night, they would gleefully read tales of clever heroes defeating their enemies with both cunning and skill. They loved their work as blacksmiths, but they also dreamed of someday having lives which might be worthy of ending up in the kind of stories they devoured the way some devoured sweet cakes.

In not too many years, Katrina and Ilsa had all of the skills necessary to be master blacksmiths in their own right, but none of the townsfolk outside of the family wanted to acknowledge them as such, nor did anyone in any of the surrounding towns. Katrina and Ilsa's work was just as good as what their father made, and they were still getting better every day, but everyone insisted that metal worked by a woman could not possibly be worth as much as the exact same piece if it had been hammered into shape by a man, not even if the woman in question had arms and shoulders just as strong as her father's. Now it was Helga Schwenke's turn to shrug ruefully.

"They are fools," she told her Katrina and Ilsa, "but God would not allow the entire world to be peopled by nothing but such fools. I have heard you speak longingly of adventure almost as often as I've heard you speak of the things your father has taught you. Let these fools be the excuse you need to go out into the world and find somewhere where the people are smart enough to properly appreciate what you have to offer." Helga Schwenke did not get nearly the credit she deserved for being exactly as practical and as loving as the man she had married, but all of her children knew the truth, as did her husband.

"Don't worry about your father and his smithy," she continued. "We'll find him some little cousin of yours to be his new apprentice, and then he can finally stop that moping he has taken to ever since he ran out of things to teach you. Your cousin Greta seemed interested in your work the last time my sister brought her to visit, and if she turns out to have half your talent and we dress her properly and keep her hair short and introduce her as Gunter, then everyone can be happy, even the fools around here who will never be the wiser."

Thus, with their family's blessing, Katrina and Ilas set out to seek fortune, adventure, and people smart to properly appreciate their skillset. 

"Where exactly do you think we should go?" Katrina asked Ilsa as they sat side by side on Katrina's bunk deep in the belly of the ship carrying them across the Atlantic. Due to the dim lighting and cramped conditions, they had to hunch over to better see the map of the United States of America spread across their laps and also to avoid hitting their heads on Ilsa's bunk above them. They did not mind, though, because their imaginations were wandering unconstrained across all the distant prairies and mountains and deserts containing the thousands of places where they might soon try to make a new life for themselves. "There are places with lots of German speakers in Pennsylvania and Ohio," she said, pointing to the places which their mother had thoughtfully circled for them before giving them the map.

"And I head they are just as stuffy as all the people back home, if not worse," Ilsa replied. She trailed her finger across the paper, heading further to the left. "All the most exciting stories happen in the West," she said. "Wouldn't you rather try there?"

"California then?" Katrina mused. It sounded right when she said it out loud, and a smile spread across her face. Yes, she liked that idea quite a lot, but there was one major concern. "We would need to learn English," she said.

Ilsa shrugged, not ruefully, but she still looked exactly like her mother as she did so. "I'm sure we can pick up enough to get by."

And that's exactly what they did.

**The End (of their old life, and the beginning of everything that came after)**


End file.
